


Bellamy and Clarke and the Lack of Christmas Spirit

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Background Abby/Kane, Background Raven/Wells, Christmas, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Plans That Go Awry, background lincoln/Octavia - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 01:54:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9152203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: “Okay, we’ve definitely established that Christmas can go screw itself this year.”Clarke is very, very serious about this conclusion, but it just makes Bellamy laugh. “We’ve definitely established that neither of us has any Christmas spirit,” he corrects.“Same thing.” She sits up straighter and puts her thinking face on, absently tapping out a non-rhythm on Bellamy’s chest as if she were sitting at a desk, brainstorming. “So the question is, what are we going to do about it?”for the prompt: “We both hate Christmas. We’re not doing Christmas. I refuse to do Christmas. We’re having sex all day instead. Deal? Deal.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this around Christmas 2015 and have only finished it now because I always take forever to write anything. And it probably could be edited more but oh well! Since I outlined the story before Season 3 aired, it is entirely based on the first two seasons (for example, no characters from S3 appear); but as it's a modern au, it doesn't matter too much I think.
> 
> Prompt is from [here](http://otpmusings.tumblr.com/post/135800693134/christmas-aus).

“Do I look fat to you?” Clarke asks, turning to the side in front of the full-length mirror. Bellamy, stretched out on the bed behind her, taking apart the Sunday paper, looks up and makes an I’m-not-answering-that face at her. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m asking because I feel bloated from holiday cheer.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “Funny. What is it today? One too many people used the words ‘happy’ and ‘holiday’ in close proximity?”

“Yes,” she answers, completely deadpan. Hating Christmas isn’t a joke. She starts to take off her shirt, then changes her mind and just adds a sweater over it instead. “Same as yesterday, and the day before, and the day before _that_ , since Thanksgiving. I’m sick of it.”

Bellamy doesn’t argue, like Clarke half-thought he would. Instead, he shoves all of the newspaper pages to the floor and turns over onto his back with a heavy sigh. “I’m getting sick of it, too. And it won’t let up for another week,” he adds.

Clarke sighs too, to echo Bellamy, but the sound comes out more like a groan. She flops down next to him. “Another _interminable_ week. I hate Christmas.”

Bellamy turns on his side, wraps an arm around her, and presses close against her. For a while, he’s silent. Clarke can feel the tip of his nose at the back of her neck, how he presses the occasional kiss to her shoulder.

“So… why do you hate Christmas this year?” he asks, after a while.

She could say that the whole holiday thing is just particularly obnoxious this year—didn’t it feel like the radio started the Christmas songs in October?—but that’s a lie and he’d know it; there’s no point in scrounging up reasons that aren’t the truth. “My mom called me this morning,” she answers, instead. Her voice is just as quiet as his was; when he reaches for her hand, she threads their fingers together. “She’s going up to the cabin on Christmas Eve, and she wants me to come too.”

“And… you’re upset that you can’t bring your boyfriend with you?” Bellamy’s voice, the high question mark at the end tipped with confusion, asks into her shoulder.

“No, that’s not it.”

“Oh, thanks.”

She reaches her free hand back and awkwardly shoves at his hip. “I just meant, she probably wouldn’t even mind if you came. It’s that she’s bringing _Kane_. Her _new boyfriend_.” Clarke rolls her eyes. She’s still facing away from Bellamy, so he can’t see the gesture, but she’s sure he can hear it in her tone. “There’s no way I can spend a holiday with the two of them. I told her I didn’t want to go, we had a fight about it…”  She trails off, groaning. She doesn’t hate Kane, exactly; she doesn’t even know him very well. But he’s not her father, and he knows it, so the few times they’ve been around each other since her mother’s ill-conceived romance began have been awkward and uncomfortable for them both. It irritates Clarke—more than irritates, _hurts_ —that her mother is ready to move on when Clarke so definitely isn’t.

“Yeah,” Bellamy answers, slowly, as if he’s carefully considered her words and has just now decided, yes, he will grant her this annoyance. “That’s a legitimate reason to want to forget it’s Christmas.”

Clarke turns around so she’s facing him, pulls him a little closer and then, nose to nose, says, “Same question for you, then. What’s your bad Christmas news?”

There’s a pause—she almost thinks he’ll say _I don’t want to talk about it_ and she’ll have to let it be. But then Bellamy sighs dramatically, rolls his eyes up to the ceiling and announces, “Boyfriend troubles,” in a weary, melodramatic tone. 

Clarke laughs, despite herself, and pushes him onto his back and climbs up on top of him. She pins his hands above his head. “Yeah, right. I know you wouldn’t even _dare_ cheat on me, Blake.”

“Hey, I didn’t say it was _my_ boyfriend causing trouble. You don’t have to let me go, though, this is… rather nice.”

His stupid grin drives her crazy. She has to resist the urge to kiss it off his smug face. 

“Be serious,” she insists instead. “I was serious with you.” She lets his wrists go, and slides her hands down his arms, down his chest, smoothing out non-existent wrinkles in his shirt. She doesn’t look at his face, but she knows he’s watching hers and that his expression is changing, growing more somber.

“Octavia,” he says finally, after a long beat. “She’s seeing some new guy, I don’t know—and don’t tell me I have to get used to her dating, because I don’t, and especially not someone four years older than her, who rides a motorcycle, and has tattoos.”

Clarke wants to laugh at the serious expression on his face, his insistent I’m-a-big-brother tone, but she holds back. Bellamy’s protective streak was one of the first things she loved about him, after all, and if it sometimes seems comically wide, that’s really more endearing than anything else. “Have you actually met this new boyfriend?” she asks.

He has to admit he has not. “No. But she’s only eighteen. I’m _not_ being irrational about this.”

She thinks he’s being a little irrational about this. But then, he didn’t say a word about her perhaps not-quite-fair aversion to City Councilman Marcus Kane, Esquire. So she just rests her palm gently against his cheek and says, softly, “You’re not being irrational. You’re trying to look after her.” She leans down for a quick kiss. “But… I assume she didn’t take it well?”

Bellamy rests his hands at Clarke’s hips, starts rubbing circles at her waist with his thumbs. “I think it’s fair to say that we’re not actually speaking at the moment.”

She’s not fooled by the light-hearted, offhand way he says this, but she’s not going to call him out on it either. She also knows, from some hard-earned experience, that meddling in Blake business is a bad idea. Instead, she leans down to kiss his forehead gently, and says, “Okay, we’ve definitely established that Christmas can go fuck itself this year.”

Clarke is very, very serious about this conclusion, but it just makes Bellamy laugh. “We’ve definitely established that neither of us has any Christmas spirit,” he corrects.

“Same thing.” She sits up straighter and puts her thinking face on, absently tapping out a non-rhythm on Bellamy’s chest as if she were sitting at a desk, brainstorming. “So the question is, what are we going to _do_ about it?”

He raises his eyebrows, a little worried, and takes her hands to make their movements stop. Twining their fingers together, he asks, “Are you suggesting some sort of forced re-Christmas-ing of our spirits?”

“What?” Clarke, somewhat distracted by watching the way Bellamy was moving their hands together through the air between them, a gentle version of fighting movements, her hands taken along for his ride, snaps her attention back to his face. “No, I’m not suggesting we enter into a strange Christmas brainwashing dystopia. I was actually thinking the opposite. How do we completely get rid of Christmas this year? I mean—don’t give me that look!—why do you always think the worst of my ideas?—I mean for _us_. How do we completely ignore it?”

Bellamy is silent for a long moment. He even stills the movements of their hands, and brings them back down to his chest, though he doesn’t let go. Clarke watches his face carefully, trying to guess what he’s thinking.

“Well,” he says finally, slowly. Then without warning, he uses their clasped hands to pull her down onto his chest. They’re nose to nose. “We could distract ourselves.”

“Distract?” she echoes, putting the same suggestive emphasis on the word that he did.

Bellamy wiggles his eyebrows. Clarke forces back a laugh and wiggles her hips.

“All day long,” he finishes, and punctuates each word with a kiss. Clarke’s sold.

*

The plan solidifies in the coming days. Bellamy is willing to play it by ear, but Clarke is set on writing up ground rules. She even takes out a pen and paper, because if they’re going to do this, they’re going to do it right. 

First, no television and no radio. The TV will be playing Christmas movies all day, and the radio has already slid into non-stop holiday favorites. (“Or in our case,” she adds, “holiday not-so-favorites.”) 

Second, both their phones need to be off—they can’t run the risk of someone texting them a _Merry Christmas_ or _Happy Holidays_ at an inopportune moment.

Third, they’ll need to remember to eat and to drink: lots of water, that’s key. Don’t want to run the risk of spending New Year’s in the hospital.

“Wait, wait,” Bellamy interrupts her, grabbing the end of her pen so she has to stop tapping it against her notebook as she thinks. This talk about dehydration and hospitals is just a little bit startling. “How much sex do you _actually_ think we’re going to have?”

“A whole day’s worth,” she answers, annoyingly slowly, eyes wide and eyebrows up, as if this were incredibly obvious. This is the expression she wears as a shortcut for: _Come on Bellamy, keep up_.

He shoots a look back at her that says: _That’s really not what I meant_ , but doesn’t press. If she wants to believe he has stamina to fuck for twenty-four hours straight, well, he’ll just take it as a compliment and move on. “Look, you’re overcomplicating this. We don’t have any Christmas decorations in the apartment. We’re not eating Christmas dinner or exchanging gifts or hanging mistletoe or making gingerbread houses—”

“You have an awful lot of cheery, holiday ideas,” she mutters, twisting her mouth into a suspicious half-scowl. Bellamy doesn’t miss a beat.

“And we’ll avoid all media all day, including all social media, and none of our friends or family will be interrupting us anyway because they all have Christmas plans of their own to keep them busy. Okay?”

Clarke pauses a beat, then another, and finally sets down her pen. “That’s exactly what I just said,” she tells him, in the clipped and uptight tone that makes it very hard for him not to call her princess.

“Yeah, but you made it into a list, and I translated it into the language of actual human beings,” Bellamy concludes, and sits back, satisfied.

Clarke rolls her eyes, but she closes the notebook, and Bellamy counts that as a win. (She has it open again five minutes later, after he’s left the room, to a new page that she labels “Christmas Sex Day Shopping List.” Bellamy will thank her, she knows, when it’s noon on the twenty-fifth and he’s hungry and there’s actual food in the kitchen.)

*

Avoiding Christmas in the days leading up to the holiday itself is harder than either Clarke or Bellamy had anticipated, and by Christmas Eve, they’re each ready to barricade themselves inside their apartment with a  pile of furniture blocking the door and blackout curtains over all the windows. This is excessive, but Clarke almost insists on such measures after returning from her Christmas Sex Day Shopping Trip. “All of the cashiers were wearing _Santa hats_ ,” she says, as she unpacks several boxes of protein bars. “Non-stop carols on the radio. Candy canes in every aisle…!”

“You’re exaggerating,” Bellamy answers, pawing through a paper bag filled with crackers, cheese, and non-Christmas cookies.

“I’m not,” she insists. “I’m scarred for life.”

Hating Christmas has become a hobby for both of them, and a distraction. To avoid feeling either depressed or angry, Bellamy cooks them an elaborate Christmas Eve dinner, featuring absolutely no holiday staples, while Clarke queues up a series of horror movies and dramas to binge watch until they fell asleep. Bellamy lasts until about 11:00, or halfway through Halloween (the best way to counteract one holiday was with another holiday, Clarke reasons), while Clarke dozes off a little past midnight. She startles awake again within the hour, and forces Bellamy into a semi-awake state too, enough to shuffle off into their bedroom.

Waking him up is not exactly easy, and she finds herself wishing, not for the first time, that she was big enough to carry him. Instead, she has to poke him repeatedly, while she chants his name over and over and tells him, “Hey,” and “Get up,” and “Come on.” Eventually, he pulls himself up to his feet, apparently powered through the force of grumbling alone. He stops again at the side of the bed, almost asleep on his feet, and Clarke has to push him a little to get him to tip over and land on the pillows. “Good,” she says, dusting off her palms and yawning. “Into bed with you. Can’t have our backs hurting before we even wake up tomorrow.”

The bounce of the bed under him as he fell had been very satisfying, and in another moment, she’s shoved back the blankets and slipped in next to him. She feels the press of his body against her back, the slide of his arm around her middle, and in a moment, she’s asleep.

*

The first thing Clarke sees when she opens her eyes is snow. Big, fat, picturesque flakes of snow drifting slowly and softly outside the window. Just the sort of image one would hope to wake up to on Christmas morning. And her first thought is _Oh_. She even smiles a bit, thoughts wandering to the tree they’ve set up in the corner of the living room and the lights they’ve draped around every bit of furniture and the shiny red and green and blue wrapped gifts under the tree and the smell of gingerbread. The images float up like the hazy afterthought of a dream. 

She sits up slowly, resting her weight on one hand, and yawns. Rubs her eyes. Shakes off the ghost of sleep, and with it, the stupid festive fantasies she’d let seep in while her guard was down. How dare her subconscious let them in?  She sees the truth now. There are no lights and no gingerbread, there is no tree, and the snow is stupid and annoying.  

She glances over at Bellamy, still asleep but on his back now, his t-shirt ridden up and the blankets pushed down, and his hair an almost comical mess. He is incredibly handsome, and she lets herself feel a bit of genuine happiness at that. She smiles slowly. There are so many worse ways to spend this one random day in December than enjoying one’s beautiful boyfriend, after all. Very carefully, not wanting to disturb him yet, she climbs on top of him so that she’s straddling his hips, rests her hands very lightly on his chest, and leans down to press a kiss to his cheek. 

In response, Bellamy makes a soft, snuffling noise, and twitches, wrinkling his nose and turning his head away. The impression is more cute-puppy-having-a-dream than sex-god-on-the-verge-of-waking, but that's okay. It's endearing. 

"Beeeeellamy," she sings, leaning in close again and rubbing the tip of her nose against his. "Bellamy, wake uuuuuup." Then, even softer, her lips almost against his lips, a whisper with the slightest hint of a melody: " _Bellamy._ " 

This time, he groans, and perhaps there's a word hidden somewhere in the sound, but it's lost in a jumble of m's and g's and r's. He tries to roll over, but with Clarke on top of him, the most he can do is twist his torso around and half-hide his face in the pillow. 

Clarke sits up, still perched on top of his hips, lets her shoulders slump, and sighs in a way that she knows a more awake Bellamy would immediately label 'dramatic.' "Okay then," she decides, out loud in her normal voice this time, not caring in the least bit (the least bit!) if Bellamy hears her, or doesn't. "Since only _one_ of us is awake right now, I guess only one of us can start enjoying our non-Christmas plans." 

She climbs off of him, then tumbles onto her side and shuffles back until she's pressed up against him as well as his awkward position will allow. Then she closes her eyes and lets herself _relax_. Really relax, in a loose-limbed, deep-breaths, mind- _completely_ -free-to-wander way. She thinks about Bellamy's warm body behind her. She thinks about the way his voice sounds raspy and low when he first wakes up; how when it’s cold at night he’ll slide an arm around her, his legs tangled up with hers and his nose against her neck; how those arms are so strong, he can lift her right up off the ground and onto the counter, and about the last time he did just that, her legs wrapped around his waist, his teeth grazing down her neck—when fantasy-Bellamy reaches her collar bone, she slides her hand down between her legs, underneath the waistband of her decidedly un-festive blue and green striped sleep pants and moans quietly into her pillow.

She circles two fingers around her clit, just once, then slides them lower, taking her time; she’s only started to get wet and she’s in no hurry. Gentle touches feel the best. Eyes closed, she imagines Bellamy’s hands gripping her thighs, spreading her legs, sliding up the inside against the sensitive skin—

Pressed against her hip like finding her, finding an anchor, then traveling down across her stomach, curling around her, sweet approximation of a hug until one palms her breast, gropes her in a blind and sleepy, still possessive way. He’s shoved his nose into her hair, and as she opens her eyes, she hears a sound this time made up mostly of m’s and r’s, the human version of a cat’s purr, but scratchier, hummed against her neck.

“Bellamy,” she says, abandoning her previous preoccupation and instead poking him in the arm. “What are you doing?”

“Mmmm, dunno. You feel good,” he mumbles back. He moves his hand down a little, against the bare skin of her stomach now where her shirt has ridden up. “Is it morning?”

“Yeah. Why do you think I was trying to wake you up?” Her voice has a definite hint of annoyance in it, but the note is false; she is perhaps a little frustrated, but mostly glad for him, for the way he cuddles closer and hums into her shoulder, for the comfort of warmth and closeness that is Bellamy and blankets on a cold December day.

“Mmmm, I’m awake,” he promises, and already his gruff voice is starting to sound somewhat like it. He’s curled so completely around her by now that she’s almost squashed into the mattress and the pillows, which is fine, though, more than fine; she twists around just enough to find his lips, and his “Really—awake—good morning,” gets lost in their first kiss of the day.

It's a sloppy kiss, awkward-angled and off-target, which wouldn’t be a problem at all, except that Bellamy’s mouth tastes like the brackish back-water of sleep, and she’s sure hers tastes just as foul. Bellamy’s making a sour expression when they pull away, but at least he looks properly shocked awake now. “Ugh, when will we ever learn?” he groans, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his wrist and falling backwards against his side of the bed again.

“It wasn’t _that_ bad,” Clarke answers, even though it was, even though she’s already reaching into the drawer of her bedside table and rooting around the detritus of painkillers, bandages, post cards, chargers, mismatched jewelry, and miscellany that Bellamy is always telling her to clean up. She returns with a bag of mints, which she rips open with difficulty. Several go careening across the desk, into the open drawer, and onto the floor, but she does manage to grab two. She unwraps one and pops it into her mouth, then holds the other out for Bellamy, who looks at it with uncalled-for suspicion.

“Where did you get these?”

“The tooth fairy,” Clarke answers, rolling her eyes. “Where do you think? I picked them up while I was shopping for the day-we-will-not-name.”

“You really did prepare for everything, didn’t you?” he asks, suitably impressed and perhaps a little resigned, then leans over to pick the mint out of her hand with his tongue. She’s about to tell him that this is the beauty of having a well-thought-out list when he adds, “I think that’s incredibly sexy,” and she decides to let the list comment wait for another day.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I find everything about you sexy.” He holds his arms out to her and she climbs on top of him again, balancing on top of him, smiling as she touches her nose playfully to his nose, and so distracted by the way he rests his hands, casually, possessively, one at the dip of her back and one on her ass, and by the way his erection presses up against her leg, to even notice the way he’s rolling his eyes at himself. “I can’t believe I just said that. That was not my most sophisticated line.”

“You don’t need lines, you’ve already got me in bed,” Clarke reminds him, and angles her head just the slightest so that their lips meet again for a kiss. This one tastes overwhelmingly of spearmint, which makes her want to chase the flavor right into his mouth.

“That I do,” he agrees, the words breathed out and lost in the beginning of another kiss, and to that Clarke only hums, and abandons all idea of further conversation. She’d rather use her mouth to explore Bellamy’s mouth, her tongue to meet, to tangle with, his tongue.

All she wants in this moment is his kiss, just to abandon all thought to this kiss. Still she can’t help grinding her hips just slightly against his hips, which makes him grab at her waist with both hands and pull her down, harder against him. And that, that is too much. He’s moved her just enough so that his cock is teasing between her legs and she only barely bites back a moan, so she abandons his mouth to kiss the hard line of his jaw instead, the softer and more delicate skin over his pulse point. “Clarke…” he breathes, request or approval or just acknowledgement, she can’t tell, as she pushes his shirt up and then urges it off. Bellamy falls back down against the pillows with a satisfied sigh, hands in her hair now as she starts to kiss down his chest. She knows she should take her time. They have all day, after all, should be pacing themselves, but all she’s thinking is that she simply _wants_ him, not with the desperation that comes from separation or frustration, but with the quiet desire that flares up here, in their warm bed, tangled up in their heavy winter blankets, a calm, white wall of snow obscuring the view of the street through the window—she wants him because he is hers and she is his and they are alone in the home they’ve made for themselves and it feels simply right and simply, purely _good_.

She reaches for his hand, intertwines their fingers as she kisses, open mouthed, against the soft-warm skin of his stomach, right above the hard jut of his hips.

It’s a little hard to shove his sleep pants off with only two hands between them, but they manage, and if Clarke almost gets kicked in the face by Bellamy’s foot shaking his second pant leg free, it’s all right. There’s no harm done.

“Sorry about that,” he mumbles.

“Apology accepted,” she hums back, and wraps her hand around his cock.

She has to let go of his hand to balance herself, now, as she flicks out her tongue and traces a circle around the head, but his hand is on her shoulder, in her hair, preserving points of contact as she settles between his spread legs and slowly takes more and more of him into her mouth. This will be, she has decided, a lazy morning blow job: not about how far down his length she can slide her lips, how fast she can bob her head, but only about all of the movements she can devise for her tongue. Bellamy’s quiet, pleased hums tell her she’s trying all the right things; the way he clenches and unclenches his fists in her hair, tries to keep his hips still but can’t help, sometimes, shifting them up, tell her he’s holding on to his control, wants this to _last_.

And it will. She slides his cock onto the hollow of her tongue, lets it rest there, presses it up against the roof of her mouth and then—

A lilting melody of chirping birds breaks her concentration, and she stops with the head of Bellamy’s cock still in her mouth. Bellamy seems to notice the abrupt change of movement before he registers the noise himself: he’s giving her a dazed and frustrated version of a death glare as he leans up on his elbows. “Clarke—what—is that your _ringtone_?”

“Um—yes?” she admits, abashed, and sits up on her knees. The birds are still chirping, the same notes repeating on an apparently endless loop.

“I thought you said no phones? I thought you said that was one of the rules? I thought—is that thing _ever_ going to go to voicemail?” His voice rises a few notes at the last question, in a way that would be pretty funny if she weren’t so embarrassed, and she clambers over him to get to her bedside table. Bellamy lets out a deep, dramatic moan and flops back down on the bed, hard enough to make it bounce.

“It’s Raven,” Clarke announces, as if this were helpful.

“And why can we hear Raven trying to call you?”

“I don’t know, I guess I—must have forgotten to turn off my phone.” She mumbles the last words quickly and under her breath, but Bellamy just snorts, and agrees:

“Apparently. So are you going to turn it off and get back here or—?”

“Um. Yeah.” Somehow she doesn’t feel too certain, though. Raven texts her often but she isn’t really big on phone calls as such, so getting a ring from her now sets off slight, but noticeable, alarm bells, and a fair bit of curiosity, too. It could just be a Merry Christmas phone call, but it’s a bit early still for best holiday wishes. So the feeling persists, the nagging sense of wrongness that makes her stare at her phone until she feels Bellamy tugging insistently at her wrist.

“Clarke. Turn it off. It’s probably nothing and this is our day, remember?”

She sighs, an undertone of grumble to it, and finally declines the call. He isn’t wrong, and in truth, she really doesn’t want to deal with Raven, even and especially in a potential crisis, at this _particular_ moment. “Fine, fine. You’re very impatient.”

“Can you blame me, though, I—”

Bellamy’s leaning against the headboard and Clarke’s climbed back into place when her phone chimes again, just once this time, and Bellamy shoots her an accusatory glare. “You didn’t actually turn it off, did you?”

“Not exactly,” she answers, slowly, already climbing back over Bellamy’s legs. She gets a bit tangled in his ankles and the blanket, so the movement turns into what she thinks is a semi-graceful lunge across her side of the bed, from which she snaps up her phone again. “Text from Raven.”

“Surprise, surprise.”

“Hey, shush. She says to call her because it’s urgent.”

Bellamy slides over, turning his body sideways in the attempt, until he’s lying at an angle with his head on Clarke’s pillow and his feet hanging off the bed and their blankets in an irredeemable tangle somewhere near the foot. “Urgent how?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m calling her,” Clarke answers decisively, already holding the phone, ringing on Raven’s end, up to her ear.

Raven answers almost immediately. “Hey, so—I have a question. If you were concerned that someone had a concussion, what sort of symptoms would you look for?”

It’s not exactly the _last_ question Clarke was expecting, but it’s close, and all she manages is a first-rate confused expression, utterly wasted on a telephone conversation, and an equally baffled-sounding, “ _What_?” Bellamy, meanwhile, is being no help at all: he’s snaked his arm around her waist, under her shirt, and is starting to kiss her back and shoulder.

“A concussion,” Raven repeats, as if it were a bad reception causing Clarke’s confusion. “What are the symptoms of a concussion?”

“I get the feeling you’re not asking out of general curiosity?”

“Oh, yeah, Clarke, I’m in the middle of a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit and it’s one of the questions,” Raven’s voice deadpans back at her. Clarke would roll her eyes and sass right back at her but she’s getting impatient, and so is Bellamy, whose kisses have started to wander up to her neck.

“So—”

“Wells was standing on one of our kitchen chairs, hanging up last minute lights above the living room window and—you know how those chairs are kind of wobbly?—he reached out too far and lost his balance and…fell.”

“He fell while hanging Christmas lights?”

“Who fell while hanging Christmas lights?” Bellamy’s voice sounds much too sultry for the question, and Clarke’s not sure if she should sigh, roll her eyes, or just laugh at the silliness of it. It’s just too much. She covers her eyes with her free hand, but Bellamy’s still tracing the curve of her earlobe with his tongue, and Raven’s still talking on the other end of the line, and it just doesn’t help at all.

“Yes. And he says he’s fine. His head just hurts a little and he’s dizzy. But _I_ think it might be a concussion and I want him to go to the hospital. He thinks it’s not worth it to waste our entire Christmas waiting for a doctor when he’s not even hurt, but I think—”

“Raven. You could just google ‘symptoms of a concussion.’”

“I thought he would trust you more than Google.”

It is true that the last time Raven and Wells tried to look up the answer to a simple question on the internet, they ended up in an hour long debate about the comparative reliability of their found sources and so Clarke can’t entirely blame her friend for not wanting to court any new complications. But she can blame them both for being two of the smartest people she knows, and still not being smart enough to think to climb on stable chairs while decorating.

“Okay. Did you actually hit his head _on_ something? Does he have any visible injuries? Bleeding? Memory loss? Nauseau?”

Bellamy stops mid-kiss, and instead tries to lean over her and catch something of Raven’s end of the conversation. “What’s going on?” he stage-whispers, more obvious, true concern in his voice this time. “Is it Wells?”

“Hey, Bellamy,” Raven answers, before Clarke can. “Yes, he has a concussion. I think. But he’s being stubborn about it.”

“Mmmm, I’ve always thought you two were a great example of opposites attracting.”

“Shut up, Blake. Clarke, he’s not bleeding and I can’t see anything wrong, but he did hit his head on the floor when he came down, and I’m concerned that his brains might be splashing around inside his skull.”

Clarke rolls her eyes, but answers seriously, “You said he’s dizzy and has a headache? Those are concussion symptoms. Of course, they’re also exactly what you’d expect anyone who fell and hit his head to feel. If you’re really worried about it, I would go to a doctor just in case.”

There’s a pause, as if Raven were mulling this over, weighing her options. Clarke bites her lip and tries not to make any sound that might give away that Bellamy’s fingers have slipped beneath the waistband of her sleep pants and are slowly, lazily, rubbing circles against her skin, lower and lower at a frustrating snail’s pace.

“Okay,” Raven says finally. She’s obviously made her mind up about something, which, historically, has usually been either a very good or very bad thing. “I’m going to tell him you recommended he see a doctor, and I’ll call you later if we have any trouble or there’s any news.”

“I’m actually going to have my phone off—”

“Thanks, Clarke!”

The line is dead before Clarke can get in another word. She sighs, and sets the phone back down on the bedside table. Bellamy’s hands have stilled again, and he’s just resting his palm, against her abdomen, fingers splayed against her skin.

“You want to keep it on in case she calls again?” he asks, quietly, into the growing silence that has spread even into Clarke’s thoughts.

A part of her does. A part worries. But she just sighs, shakes her head, and answers, “No. It’s not an emergency; he’ll be fine. And we promised ourselves this day just for us, no interruptions.” She twists around and finds his lips for a kiss. “No _more_ interruptions. Plus, the next time that phone rings, it’s not going to be Raven with an update. It’s going to be my mom or one of our friends trying to force holiday cheer on us.”

“Can’t have that,” Bellamy agrees, as Clarke reaches over to power off her phone. Then he kisses her on the cheek, untangles himself from the blankets and sheets, and rolls, quite literally out of bed.

“What are you doing? I thought you’d want to pick up where we left off.”

“No, the moment’s gone.” He stretches, arms over his head and a deep breath filling his lungs, which is really unfair, because it’s putting Clarke back in the proper mood again and _incredibly_ quickly. “And I’m hungry. How do you feel about breakfast?”

*

Clarke doesn't feel great about breakfast, until Bellamy makes pancakes, with syrup on top and strawberries on the side, and then she warms up to the idea. True, it's not exactly the anti-Christmas breakfast she was initially imagining. It's actually the sort of breakfast that one feels cozy and warm and even downright _festive_ eating, at least while the snow continues to fall in thick, fluffy flurries outside the window, and their unreliable old heater turns their apartment just a little bit too toasty. But she doesn't care. Bellamy's feet play with her feet under the table, while they each try to keep straight faces, hide their giggles behind their hands when they fail. They do not talk of anything important. They debate whether or not Bellamy’s laugh can be fairly called a _giggle_ at all; if their kitchen cactus needs watering; which is scarier, _Nightmare on Elm Street_ , or _Halloween_ ; and by the time the pancakes are gone and Clarke’s down to her last strawberry, she feels just about as relaxed as she could ever imagine feeling and all she wants to do is stretch as far as she can stretch, all the way down to her toes, and then maybe get in under some blankets with her very favorite boyfriend until they’re too warm to need clothes anymore, and see how things go.

“You know, if the teaching thing doesn’t work out, you could always consider an alternate career as a breakfast-chef,” she suggests, raising her arms up above her head and twisting her spine, feeling a sigh already building.

“I don’t think ‘breakfast-chef’ is a thing,” Bellamy counters, “and I don’t know, Clarke—”

She settles again, reaches out for the last strawberry on her plate, and pouts when Bellamy steals it from under her fingertips.

“I’m actually,” he finishes—holds the strawberry out for her, slight smile on his lips that he’s trying, failing, to control as she slides her lips over the end, takes a slow bite—“still pretty hungry.”

Clarke arches up one eyebrow. “Really? Still? Hungry for what?”

Bellamy doesn’t answer, just smirks, and as she nibbles away on the end of her breakfast, he stands, picks her up with her arms around her waist like she weighs nothing—her legs and arms around him, clinging to him; she lets out a high-pitched little squeak as she leaves the ground—and sets her down on the island dividing the kitchen from the living room. “You,” he kisses against her neck, and she tosses the strawberry leaves down on the floor.

Bellamy leaves a trail of open-mouthed, wet kisses against her neck, up behind her ear, across her face, until he finally finds her mouth, and then they’re pulling at each other, scrambling against each other with movements alternately ragged and in perfect sync. Almost a dance between them, unchoreographed, instinctual. She pulls him close with her hands at his waist; he pushes her back until she needs to flail one hand back to hold her weight. But as the kiss deepens, tongue flashing against tongue, his palm following the curves of her up and his thumb tracing circles around her nipple through her thin sleep t-shirt, she exhales a gentle breath against his lips and her whole body starts to melt.

When she feels his hands at the hem of her shirt, she lifts her arms for him; the brief pass of fabric between them interrupts their kiss for only a moment, but they meet again as if ages had passed since she last felt his hands on her skin, his rough warm hands on her back and her stomach and her chest. She wants to pull him closer. Spreads her legs wide and drags him closer, two hands on his ass and her legs twining around his legs and when he starts kissing down to her collarbone, her breasts, she tilts her head back and closes her eyes and does not stop the slight noises that escape in exhales of deep breaths.

It is a bother, but well worth it, to lift her hips long enough for Bellamy to tug at her flannel pants, slide her panties down until her clothes are just a pile on the kitchen floor. “You’re gorgeous, you know,” he murmurs, and Clarke almost laughs, because she doesn’t feel so gorgeous trying to sweep a clear space on their cluttered countertop. She doesn’t feel gorgeous with her hair still bed-head tangled and sleep still around her eyes.

But she feels downright _stunning_ when he lays her down where his reading glasses and her colored pencils used to sit (a sharp intake of breath; her laughter dies out)—she feels perfectly beautiful when he looks down at her with the most open and adoring expression on his face, as if she were royalty, or the most breathtaking work of art. He holds her gaze a long moment. Everything else in that moment is quiet and still. The corner of her mouth twitches, like she’s the tiniest bit embarrassed, uncomfortable to be the center of his attention, and he moves a little closer in the space between her legs. Clarke wraps her ankles around his legs, then reaches up, and traces a line through the freckles on his cheek.

“I’m gorgeous?” she echoes.

“You know it.”

The words skim gentle over her lips on an outtake of breath, tinged with a smile, and slide into a kiss in which she immediately loses herself. She skims her hands over his back, following every twist of muscle, as he kisses down her neck, over her chest (her own back arching up), tongue teasing over her nipple (her leg curling around his leg), hand grabbing possessively at her thigh. By the time he’s made his way down between her legs, she has her foot up on one of their kitchen stools, tipping it forward on two legs with her heel scrambling for purchase on the smooth wood, and her fingers are fisting in his mussed morning-hair, and her body has become only smooth curves and stretch and strain because his hands are spreading her legs wide and the tip of his tongue is playing over her clit. Too soon—and not soon enough because _oh_ —he’s licking into her, lips and tongue and she just knows he’s smiling, feels it in the movements of his mouth and the murmur of words against the inside of her thigh. “Can’t believe you’re so wet.”

“I’ve been this wet all morning. Why I didn’t—want to leave the bed—”

“We’re just fine here, I think,” Bellamy whispers back, and cuts off what might have been some sort of answer by sliding two fingers inside her, twisting them just so as he sucks her clit into his mouth. And fuck, but all words are pretty much erased from her mind at that. Now all that’s left is a pleasant _oh wow_ hum in her mind and the ragged _yes_ es and _right there_ s that manage to escape through her staggered breaths. She’s slipping quickly into a blissed out pleasure-loop, drifting farther and farther from the real world and anchored only by quick-flick press of tongue and unexpected-arch of thick fingers and everything building up and up, steady, and _yes like **that**_ , and—

And that, a sharp rap of knuckles on the door.

For a moment, Clarke has no idea what the noise is, except that it’s harsh and way too loud, and it’s made Bellamy _stop_ , which is—not great. Actually awful. She deflates. Her shoulders crash back against the countertop and her arms fall, weightless, to her sides and her eyelids open with the inevitability of gravity, only their drab apartment ceiling in her line of sight. Her heel slides off the top of the stool and almost drags it with a crash down to the floor. Bellamy catches it at the last moment and sets it back in place carefully, quietly, whispering a desperate, low “Shhh!” at her as he does. He’s still half-kneeling between her legs, and if Clarke’s body feels boneless and empty—and not in the pleasant, satisfied sort of way that comes with the orgasm she’s been so bitterly deprived of—his is tense and poised, obviously wary.

The knocking sounds again.

“What is tha—”

“Shhh,” Bellamy whispers again, and shoots a look up at her. Then he half-turns toward the door again. “Pretend we’re not here.”

“Bellamy!” a loud, familiar voice calls. “Clarke! We know you’re here!” It’s Jasper, but something about the sound of stomping feet that undercuts his words makes it clear he’s not alone. It’s no surprise that Monty’s voice continues a beat later: “Come on, let us in!”

“Yeah,” Clarke mumbles, leaning up on her elbows with a groan. “I don’t think pretending not to be home is going to work.”

Bellamy scrubs his hands over his face as he gets up shakily to his feet. “Well, open the door for them, then,” he sighs. “Before they knock it down.”

“Me? Bellamy, I’m—” She cuts herself off, aware her voice was rising just a little too loud, because it’s one thing to give up pretending to be away, and another to shout your private business all the way out into the hall. Quieter, almost a hiss, she reminds him, “I’m not wearing any clothes right now!”

“Then get dressed! I need to—think about baseball or something, I don’t—”

Clarke’s too pleasure-drugged and groggy and bitter to understand what that’s supposed to mean, but before she can ask, she glances down and, yeah, it all starts to make sense. She bites back a giggle, and Bellamy just groans, and turns to knock his forehead against the refrigerator. He leans there with his eyes shut tight and all manner of unsexy thoughts, Clarke can only assume, frantically scrolling through his brain.

“Sorry,” she says, hopping up to her feet and then dropping a quick kiss to his bicep before she ducks to grab her sleep pants from the floor.

“This is ridiculous, just let us in!” Jasper’s voice pleads through the door, and another flurry of knocks sounds. Clarke understands the impulse but their impatience does not making finding her shirt any easier.

“We’re coming, just wait a second!” she calls back, wincing at her own phrase ( _I **wish** I were coming_ ), as she finds her shirt finally, half-hidden between two of the couch cushions. She pulls it on, glances over at Bellamy—he’s leaning his back against the fridge now, and he looks as sour and frustrated as she feels, but otherwise presentable—and then jogs over to the door at last. As she reaches for the doorknob she realizes her panties are still somewhere on the kitchen floor. She’s torn, for a half-second, between rushing back for them and risking Jasper and Monty just knocking down the door, and leaving them where they are, thus taking on the considerably more real risk her friends will find them when they inevitably try to raid her cupboards. But before she can move she glances over her shoulder and sees Bellamy toss them, in a long and graceful arc, clear across their living room and to the doorway of their bedroom.

“Nice shot, babe.”

“Thanks. We’re good?”

“I think so.” They better be, anyway, because they’ve stalled more than long enough, and she doesn’t have much choice anymore but to unlock the door and pull it open. She’s braced herself to see Jasper and Monty on the other side, and it’s a little unexpected, a little much, somehow makes her feel twice as underdressed and embarrassingly pink-cheeked to see not two, but four of her friends crowding in the doorway, impatient and bundled up in winter coats and scarves and hats.

“Did you know it’s freezing outside?” Miller asks. He’s rubbing his bare hands together dramatically, pauses only to huff warm breath against his cupped palms.

“And barely any better in your building?” Harper adds.

“Twenty-eight degrees outside,” Jasper specifies, as Monty pulls off his hat and rounds out the chorus: “Can we come in?”

“Um—yeah.” Clarke’s a little dazed, but she pushes the door wide and steps back, staring at them as they shove inside, stomping their feet on the welcome mat. Harper shakes off the snow from her scarf and Jasper ruffles it out of his own hair, and all she’s thinking, as coats are unzipped and gloves pulled off, is that four people seems an awful lot like a dozen people in their small apartment, and also that, well at least they’re not tracking snow and slush everywhere.

Miller catches sight of Bellamy first, raises a hand in greeting at him, and soon _hello_ s are being exchanged all around. In the confusion that follows, Clarke hopes that no one will notice anything odd about the scene they (almost) barged in on, and at first, she feels safe enough betting on the unobservant nature of their friends. Jasper takes immediate notice only of the food situation—“You already ate breakfast, huh?” he asks, peering down at their empty plates, glancing over to the empty pan on the stove, undeterred in his disappointment when Monty reminds him, “And so did you”—and Harper just glances around at their apartment and notes, “You’re really not getting into the Christmas spirit this year, huh?”

Miller doesn’t care about the apartment or the food. He pulls up a stool from the island, glances at the awkwardly cleared space on the countertop, then over to Bellamy and back at Clarke, and just as she is about to answer, “No, actually, we—” he cuts her off with a deceptively light, “Did we interrupt something?”

 _Just any possibility that either of us will actually come today_ doesn’t seem like an appropriate answer, somehow. Especially not with everyone staring at her and Bellamy in turn, the general inevitable scuffling noises of six people in a tiny kitchen all overwhelmed now by a silence so perfect that the sound of Jasper biting into a strawberry, accidentally left abandoned next to the pancake mix, sounds grossly loud in the awkward calm.

“Only us clearing up and doing the dishes,” Bellamy answers, finally, and with an exaggerated put-upon gruffness that might deter even Miller for a minute or two. “Since you’re all here, you can help.”

“Why _are_ you here, anyway?” Clarke adds. “I thought you were all going out of town for the holiday.”

“We were supposed to,” Harper answers. “We’re all set to go, but we decided to carpool to the train station in Miller’s car, and it died on us halfway there.”

“But conveniently only a block away from you guys,” Jasper adds, with forced positivity that doesn’t catch.

Bellamy just sighs, crosses his arms against his chest, and asks, “Why aren’t you knocking on Raven’s door? She knows cars—Clarke and I aren’t going to be able to get that thing to start.”

“Neither can Miller, most days,” Monty points out, and Miller just shoots him a glare. But all he says, to Bellamy, is:

“Raven lives on the other side of town. And we tried calling both her and Wells but neither of them picked up.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore anyway,” Harper says. She drops down into one of the kitchen table chairs, her shoulders slumped, and leans her cheek on one closed fist. “We spent so long trying to get that car to start that even if we left this moment for the station, we wouldn’t make it on time. And there’s no way there are other tickets available on Christmas day.”

She looks so dejected, and her expression is mirrored on the faces of each of her friends, that Clarke can’t help but feel bad. Still awkward, and annoyingly uncertain for standing in the middle of her own kitchen, but sympathetic nonetheless. “So you’re stuck here for Christmas?”

“Basically.” Jasper shrugs. “We could grab a taxi back to our apartments, I guess...”

“What are you two doing for Christmas?” Monty asks, considerably less subtly, but with no apparent awkwardness.

A slight pause follows, during which Clarke looks to Bellamy, and Bellamy looks back at Clarke, and she tries to coordinate their thoughts using the power of her mind alone. It doesn’t quite work. When Miller opens his mouth to offer his own hypothesis, she can only answer quickly, “We’re staying in.”

“Netflix,” Bellamy adds, after another awkward beat.

“And chill?” Miller asks, under his breath.

Clarke rolls her eyes up to the ceiling and pretends both that she didn’t hear him, and that it was a ridiculous comment, not worthy of direct response. “Nothing exciting,” she says. “ _Really_ nothing exciting at all.”

She raises her eyebrows, looks around the room at each of them. It’s supposed to be a _hint_.

No one takes it. The amused look on Miller’s face tells her that she was not being subtle, but no one volunteers to leave, and she begins to wonder if she is perhaps being cruel. She isn’t usually the sort of person who kicks out her friends when they’re in need. And really, are she and Bellamy going to be able to recapture any sort of mood after this anyway? She’s pretty sure the last thing either one of them will want to do is get naked when their friends are forlorn and cold out in the snow—perhaps, she considers, they can just tell their visitors the no-Christmas rules, and call it a compromise, or a condition of sanctuary. They’ll get some weird looks, but there’s nothing new in that. There might have been a karaoke incident, in fact, not long after she and Bellamy started dating, that set the standard for scandalized, disapproving, and awestruck expressions and she’s pretty sure an announcement that they’re boycotting Christmas can’t be any harder to hear than their drunken rendition of “I Got You Babe”—nothing could. She’ll survive the extra company, as long as no one tries to bake any gingerbread men or string up any colorful lights.

And she’s just about to say as much when Bellamy beats her to it: “You guys can stay here if you want,” he says. “Stay all day. Just—Clarke and I have some stuff we need to do.”

“Some stuff?” Monty asks, like he has no idea what that could mean. (This is an innocent routine Clarke doesn’t believe for a moment.)

“In our bedroom,” Bellamy clarifies.

Jasper and Harper exchange a look. Miller bites his lip hard and looks at the ceiling. No one says a word.

“Yeah,” Clarke puts in. “Might take a while.” She crosses the room and takes Bellamy’s hand in hers, pulling him after her as she starts to walk backward toward the doorway into the living room. “Help yourselves to anything you want but _don’t_ eat everything!” She shoots Jasper a pointed look, which he returns with a scandalized, disbelieving gesture and a pout.

Miller picks up a bottle of water from the island counter and lobs it, last minute, in Bellamy’s direction. “Hey Blake, stay hydrated okay?”

Bellamy catches the bottle, barely, then touches it to his forehead in a casual salute. But he doesn’t answer beyond an embarrassed, gruff grumble.

“They are _so_ obvious,” Clarke hears Miller laugh, just as she crosses the threshold to their bedroom, right before Bellamy closes the door.

*

Bellamy has his laptop open on top of the dresser, and he’s scrolling through iTunes, looking for something that is “loud,” as he puts it, “but not too loud. Not obnoxious.”

“This is why you should always have a playlist prepared,” Clarke answers, lying back against the pillows of their bed. She fiddles with the drawstring of her sleep pants absently. “A ‘boycotting the holidays slash sex marathon’ playlist maybe. Or a ‘barricaded in our own bedroom by our friends’ playlist. Do you think this is wrong?”

Bellamy settles on a slow instrumental, then cranks up the volume. He clambers up onto the end of the bed, climbs on top of Clarke until he’s straddling her hips, and leans over to press an unexpectedly gentle kiss to the tip of her nose. “Wrong that we abandoned our friends?” he asks. “Or wrong that we’re considering having sex with them just one thin wall away from us?”

“Both.”

Bellamy’s legs, Clarke thinks, as she runs her hands up the outside of his thighs and tugs, ineptly, at the waistband of his pants, should be declared a fucking national treasure.

“And I’m more than considering it,” she adds. “I’m _planning_ on it.”

“Never has the word ‘planning’ sounded so sexy,” Bellamy murmurs, and leans in for the sort of long, searching kiss that completely erases a whole lifetime’s worth of moral conundrums. When he pulls back, Clarke’s more than a bit out of breath. “So—we were asking ourselves if this might be wrong?”

“Mmmhmm.” Her lips are buzzing, so all she can do is hum and nod in answer.

Bellamy’s hands are sliding up her sides, under her shirt, warm and strong so that she feels no chill as he pulls her shirt up over her head, tosses it aside. “Oh this is definitely wrong,” he says. And kisses her neck, a trail of lips and tongue down to her collarbones. “Undoubtedly wrong.”

Clarke lets her eyes close, and a small, blissful smile curve her lips, as she drapes her arms over Bellamy’s shoulders and lets her fingertips skim over his back. He’s pushed the pillows out of the way so she’s flat on her back and she has her legs wrapped around him too, body wrapped up in his body except that as he kisses his way lower her arms go loose and somehow she has her fingers in his hair, now, as he traces his tongue around her nipple and she manages, at last, “We’re terrible hosts.”

“I don’t care, though,” Bellamy answers—voice so gruff Clarke has to cover her hand with her mouth, so she won’t moan—and turns his attention to her other breast.

The music reaches a crescendo of guitar and Clarke starts to wiggle against the mess of blankets and sheets, as if a slide of her hips would be enough to get this stupid flannel off of her for good; but it’s not. Bellamy laughs, a low chuckle against her bare skin. “Need some help?”

“No.” She shoves at his hip, then gives his ass a short slap. “Just take your pants off.”

Bellamy laughs at that, too, and rolls off her just long enough to strip off the rest of his clothes. For a few moments, they are both a confused jumble of snagged limbs and tangled fabric; Clarke almost kicks Bellamy in the face, and Bellamy makes a decided _oof_ noise as he turns onto his side and wraps his arms and legs around Clarke again. But then they are comfortably caught up in each other again. Bellamy’s tongue finds her tongue. His arm wraps around her waist, and her ankle hooks over his calf, and every bit of her presses against every bit of him.

“Can we just,” she murmurs between kisses, “stay like this—for the rest of the day?”

Bellamy pulls her closer, tips her head back so he can kiss her neck. “Like this or—?”

“Well, maybe—”

She rolls over in one motion, not as smooth as she was hoping, bumping a little over a pillow left stranded in the middle of the bed, and pulls Bellamy with her as well as she can. He settles between her legs and looks down at her with an expression Clarke only sees in these moments: gentle and loving but filled with such desire that Clarke can’t help but pull him down for another kiss, press her hips up against him lewdly. She reaches back blindly toward the bedside table. They keep condoms in the top drawer but she can’t _quite_ reach, and it’s frustrating and stupid, how she can barely even curl her fingers around the drawer knob. And Bellamy is distracting her, hard against her leg and his thumb sliding over her nipple, tongue pulsing against hers in an open kiss.

“Oh—fuck—” she curses, words inaudible against his teeth.

Bellamy just smiles, kisses her again, and murmurs, “Yeah. That is what we’re trying to do.”

Clarke rolls her eyes, doesn’t mean it, sighs with stupid frustration and tries to pull herself higher up the bed. Tries to pull Bellamy’s weight with her. He grumbles a bit, scrambles up closer to the head of the bed, then leans up one elbow and says, “You should just let me—”

“No, no I got it—”

“Don’t be stubborn—”

“Bellamy, I got it—”

They’re both half-sitting up, tangled up in each other, and the bedside table drawer only half-open for all their effort, but just as Clarke has started to slither her way out from under Bellamy—she has this idea of just _launching_ herself toward the goal—there is a sudden sharp rapping of knuckles against their bedroom door and they both freeze.

Clarke meets Bellamy’s gaze. He raises his eyebrows back at her.

The knocking sounds again. “Hey,” Monty’s voice reaches them, a little tentative—also a little amused. “Don’t mean to interrupt, just thought you should know…there’s a tree with legs outside your apartment.”

The expression on Bellamy’s face tells Clarke that the words sounded just as nonsensical to him as they did to her. Which is a bit of a relief. She sighs and sits up properly, leaning against the headboard while Bellamy drapes himself, defeated, over her lap with his nose against her stomach, and calls back, “Care to run that one by us again?”

“There was a knock on the door and when I went to see who it was, all I could make out through the peephole was a big pine tree with legs.”

“That’s great, Monty,” Bellamy answers. “Did the tree say anything?”

“No. So…should I let it in?”

Bellamy twists around until he can meet Clarke’s gaze. She raises her eyebrows and mouths, “Sounds suspicious.” He nods. They wait a long moment, half-expecting Monty to ask again, then Clarke shrugs and Bellamy answers, loudly, but with a definite sigh to his voice, “Yeah, let it in.”

*

When they emerge from the bedroom a few minutes later, it is into a living room that has been utterly transformed. There’s a string of multi-colored lights around the window and a somewhat bedraggled chain of paper snowflakes draped over the books on the bookshelf. Greeting cards proclaiming _Merry Christmas_ and _Happy Holidays_ have been stuck in the corners of picture frames. Someone’s put a plate of red and green decorated sugar cookies on the coffee table, next to an open laptop playing _All I Want for Christmas Is You_ , and on the island countertop that forms the boundary with the kitchen are arranged a line of cheery snowman figurines, the ones Clarke collected, one a year, from the ages of 4 to 18, the ones she told herself she wasn’t even going to _think_ about this year. From the kitchen itself wafts a startling combination of strange, delicious smells.

“We hope you don’t mind,” Harper says, half-turning to look at them from her seat on the couch next to Miller. They’re both holding large mugs of something warm, from which she takes a small sip before adding, “Your place wasn’t very festive.”

“We, um, we don’t mind,” Clarke answers. Her voice sounds distant even to herself. She’s a bit surprised to realize that she _doesn’t_ mind. She likes the lights and the snowmen and the paper snowflakes and the cookies. She likes the feeling of warmth and friends and coziness that envelopes her, that she didn’t even realize she was missing until now. But she also can’t really focus on any of this. She can only watch Bellamy, who’s staring at the corner of the room, staring with an expression like held breath that not even Clarke can read.

The pine, a beautiful, tall tree only slightly lopsided in its stand, is hard to miss. But even harder to ignore is the man standing next to it, broad-shouldered and tall, dressed in black boots and black pants and a grey t-shirt that doesn’t hide at all either the muscles of his arms and chest or the tattoos that circle round his biceps. He’s model-handsome, turn-heads gorgeous, and he would be, on top of this, incredibly intimidating too, if he weren’t currently holding a tangled string of Christmas lights and staring back at Bellamy with the wide-eyed expression of a frightened forest creature.

It is Octavia, standing next to him with the second half of the lights, who speaks first.

“Bell,” she says, in a light outtake of breath. Then she drops the lights, and crosses the room in three long strides to wrap her arms around him in a hug. “I don’t want to fight on Christmas,” she murmurs, as his arms circle round her in return. “I’m sorry about what I said. A lot of it was… I shouldn’t have said it.”

“I shouldn’t have said most of what I said, either.” He squeezes her a little tighter, for a moment, then slowly pulls away, hands on her upper arms, looking at her. “You aren’t a kid anymore. I’m sorry I still treat you like one, sometimes.”

“I’m sorry I still act like one sometimes,” Octavia answers, starting to smile. “Stomping off like I did—not mature. Here.” She pulls back out of his grasp, and walks over to pull the mysterious, handsome stranger over to her side. “I want you to meet Lincoln. _Actually_ meet him and get to know him. Then tell me if you think he’s a good guy or not.”

There’s a moment when not even Clarke is sure what Bellamy will do, when he just stares at Lincoln with a somber, appraising expression, and waits, as if this were one last final test. But then he holds out his hand and says, with real sincerity, if perhaps some brusque reluctance, “It’s good to meet you.”

The stiffness leaves Lincoln’s shoulders with a long exhale of breath, and he actually smiles as he shakes Bellamy’s hand. “You too. Octavia’s told me a lot about you.”

“She hasn’t said much about you,” Bellamy answers, grim for a beat before he adds, “Because I didn’t give her the chance.” Then he pulls Lincoln closer, one hand on his shoulder, and says in a tone that pretends to be lower than it is, “I assume I don’t actually have to tell you that if you hurt her, you’ll have to face me?”

Lincoln is several inches taller than Bellamy and could probably crush his head like a walnut, but he has the good sense to look nervous nonetheless. “She already told me,” he says, and Bellamy claps him once on the back and lets him go.

“So—you were the tree with legs, I guess?” Clarke asks, quick, into the pause that follows, and Lincoln glances back at the still-undecorated pine and nods.

“Jasper texted and said you guys didn’t have a tree,” Octavia says. “Or lights or decorations or anything Christmas-y at all. So this is our peace-offering, I guess.” She bumps Bellamy’s shoulder and adds, grinning, “With a little more notice, I could have dug up our old family ornaments, too. Like the little penguin you made in third grade—”

“I think it’s fine with just the lights,” Bellamy cuts in, but he’s smiling, and he wraps his arm around Octavia in another hug.

“They brought these cookies, too,” Miller says, as he bites into a misshapen Christmas stocking covered in red sugar sprinkles. “These delicious, delicious cookies.”

“Hey!” Jasper appears in the doorway from the kitchen, holding a mixing spoon that he points in Miller’s direction. “Don’t eat too many of those or you won’t be able to enjoy the _culinary masterpiece_ Monty and I are creating.”

“Right now we’re calling it ‘some sort of pasta dish,’ and ‘some sort of vegetable dish,’” Monty adds, popping his head around the doorway behind Jasper. “You don’t have much to work with, you know.”

“We have plenty of food,” Clarke argues, quite truly insulted for a moment, until Bellamy gives her hand a squeeze. Then she forces a shrug. “Maybe—not the sort of ingredients you need, though.” Unless they usually cook impromptu Christmas feasts out of sex-marathon supplies, that is.

Jasper’s giving her a weird look, his version of raising one eyebrow at her, but before he can answer there’s another knock on the door. Clarke glances over, meets Bellamy’s eye. And he just sighs and asks, “Is everyone we know going to try to get into our apartment today?”

“Probably only the people I texted and implied should come over,” Jasper says. “Like Octavia. And also Raven and Wells.”

It is, in fact, Raven and Wells on the other side of the door when Clarke opens it, bundled up in heavy jackets and hats and each carrying a basket filled with perfectly wrapped, brightly colored gifts. They pull Bellamy and Clarke into fierce, awkwardly angled hugs, and for a moment Clarke is caught up in the after-chill of cold on their clothes, the snow melting in their hair and on their shoulders. When Wells pulls back, she gives him an appraising look and asks, “Did you go to the hospital? How’s your head?”

“Raven dragged me to the ER, and I’m fine. Just a minor concussion.”

“Emphasis on _concussion_ ,” Raven adds.

“Emphasis on _minor_ ,” Wells counters, and Bellamy rolls his eyes.

“Get in here and stop letting the cold in, and we won’t make you balance on any rickety chairs while you’re here,” he says.

“How generous,” Raven quips, as she closes the door behind her and then passes her basket of gifts off to Bellamy. “Jasper said your place was lacking in holiday cheer, so we brought our New Year’s gift exchange gifts early.”

“Though it looks like you’ve got the Christmas decorating thing mostly under control,” Wells notes, as he glances around the newly transformed apartment.

Clarke follows his gaze, over the snowmen figurines, the blinking lights, the snowflake chain, the holiday cards, the partially decorated tree, the sugar cookies. She looks at her friends: Lincoln and Octavia untangling the lights for the tree, Harper adjusting her Christmas music selection, Miller standing up now to help Jasper and Monty with their food experiments, Raven and Wells pulling off their heavy coats—and then at Bellamy, coming to stand behind her now, arms wrapped around her waist and lips pressing a kiss against her hair, and she thinks _yes. We’ve got this Christmas thing under control_.

“Only thanks to all of you,” Bellamy says. “I think we’re ready for a Merry Christmas now.”

*

Later, dirty dishes piled in the sink and wrapping paper in a crumpled mess next to the tree, everyone lazing over couches and chairs or on the floor, and the Grinch on Harper’s laptop, cutting up the roast beast, Clarke notices her thoughts starting to wander. She’s curled up against Bellamy’s side, his arm around her and her head on his chest, fingers playing with the hem of his shirt. And she’s sure that there’s nothing different about her, nothing off about the way she rests her ear against his heart, nothing odd about her breathing or the way she holds him close, but still he leans down and whispers to her, “You okay?” 

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “I’m fine. I’m good.”

He glances down to where Lincoln and Octavia are sitting, on the floor, their backs against the couch, and watches for a moment the gentle way Lincoln plays with Octavia’s hair.

Then: “Are you thinking about your mom?” he whispers.

She is. She is and doesn’t want to say it, but—“Yeah. A little.”

“Call her. She’s probably tried to call you a dozen times already.”

Clarke hesitates, though she doesn’t need to. Bellamy’s only saying what’s been on her mind now for a while. She gives a little nod, and with some reluctance disentangles herself from his warm arms and the blanket they’ve draped themselves in. She stands up and, as unobtrusively as possible, tiptoes her way around Octavia, past the armchair where Raven and Wells are squashed together, and into the bedroom, where she turns on the light and powers on her phone.

Three missed calls from Mom, and a voicemail that she doesn’t bother to listen to.

Her mom’s phone rings only twice before Abby answers, disbelieving voice making her name sound like a question: “Clarke?”

“Hey mom.” Her voice sounds quiet and reluctant to her own ears, like she’s sharing a secret, like she’s hiding and afraid to be caught. She’s embarrassed, a little, for waiting this long. But it also just feels right, to talk softly in this shadowy, empty room, the gray December day shading into afternoon and the snow outside, still coming down, obscuring any sense of the hour. “Are you having a merry Christmas? How’s…how’s the cabin?” She pauses a moment, closes her eyes because this doesn’t actually need to be hard; she’s just making it hard. “How’s Marcus?”

“He’s fine. We’re both fine. Are you all right? I tried to call and your phone went to voicemail.”

“Yeah, I—I’m fine.” As she talks, she starts walking across the room slowly. Her mind feels disconnected to her body, as she listens to her mother’s voice, realizes she doesn’t actually know exactly how to say what she wants to say. “I shouldn’t have—been so rude about the Marcus thing. I really do want…you to be happy, Mom.”

“Oh, Clarke, I know.” There’s relief clear in Abby’s voice, and it makes Clarke feel, deep down, like everything is okay again. Or will be. She comes to the bedroom door and leans against the doorframe. The credits are rolling on _The Grinch_ but no one’s made a move to switch movies just yet. “Just because I’m seeing Marcus doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten your father—”

“I know, Mom. You don’t need to say it.”

Clarke imagines that, on the other side of the line, Abby is starting, tentatively, to smile.

“The cabin has been really beautiful this year. We’ve been talking about staying a little longer, maybe through the new year. I’d love it if you could come up for a day or two. Bring Bellamy, of course. Bring any of your friends you want.”

In the living room, her friends have started watching _A Nightmare Before Christmas_ , while Jasper and Monty bring in large trays of mugs—probably, Clarke guesses, almost overflowing with ancient hot chocolate from the back of the cupboard—and Raven and Harper start a sing-a-long. But it’s Bellamy who Clarke is watching. Somehow, he seems to feel her eyes on him, and he half-turns to look back at her, raises his eyebrows in a question. She just smiles, and gives a little nod. Then feeling silly, feeling a sudden stupid sort of giddiness, she blows him a kiss.

“Yeah,” she answers, finally. “Yeah, Mom, New Year’s at the cabin sounds like a lot of fun. I can’t wait.”

 


End file.
